


Paper pushing, Secrets and Musing of a Siren

by AShinyTurquoise



Series: AU 2 [1]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angel is v/ important to this AU, Angel just wants to feel like a normal person, But alas that normally leads to her burying herself in paperwork, Everything has sort of gone to hell in a handbasket, Gen, Jack being insufferable, Jack should really take better care of himself in this AU TBH, Kill me now this was supposed to be short, This was supposed to be a small thing then the world building attacked, Uploaded 'cause every time i'd read through it i'd add more and tweak it and guh, but things are sort of okay, just take it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 11:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10990083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AShinyTurquoise/pseuds/AShinyTurquoise
Summary: Just another day in one of the weeks of being roped into being her father's glorified receptionist slash secretary, Courtesy of the previous one having had enough.Turns out to be a good call as she is stuck filling in for Jack due to being an office hermit and absorbing himself in work Timothy decides that Jack really needs to be forcibly dragged away from the office, Leaving her in charge.She didn't quite expect it to go like normal but nonetheless by the end of the endeavour there are no regrets, After all she managed to make a few friends in the end (And no her father's associates and friends don't count) and it paves the way for the rest of the AU(might write the Atlas/DAHL/Sanctuary centric AU starter perspective parts for this AU later, The more DAHL-centric one is already in the works as i am tossing it about in my head as i write this very summary)





	Paper pushing, Secrets and Musing of a Siren

**Author's Note:**

> An wee little note first! 'Helios' is actually a central building of Opportunity which is a Hyperion settlement slash residential area surrounding 'Helios' as the Hyperion Pandora HQ is actually an huge office building.

Of all things Angel never expected to be approached by her father as secretary slash glorified sort-of-PA. (The last one opted to plead for if it was possible to take a different job instead, Something about it being stressful and 'finding Wilhelm creepy because he doesn't seem to ever talk' on top of the rest of the twenty minute long rant, Jack eventually relented even if only to get her to shut up)

'Earn your keep' her father said. Plus it wasn't the first time she had filled in before between personal receptionists, Secretaries or PA’s even (as rare as they were to be hired as such in the first place)  
And she was just treated like any old regular secretary because nobody knew she was Jack's kid (it was kind of not public information on Pandora, Or public at all for that matter even if in the place she was born it was known, The whole siren thing? Virtually nobody knew as that was an even closer guarded secret)...Well that was true as of Pandora, Elsewhere while she was growing up she filled in as Secretary for her dad plenty of times. (It wasn’t needed per say most of the time but if you had lots of paperwork it was apparently nice to have someone else do the talking for you, That and it gave him an excuse to keep her in his office where he could make sure she was safe. (though occasionally she was left office sitting for brief periods of time while he went out of the office for a bit.

Though she is glad he in recent years has gotten used to Pandora and how the Helios branch of Hyperion ran.  
And took a good lesson in 'chill the fuck out and stop being so high strung' (not that she could blame him because from what she has seen all the other planetary branches were pretty cutthroat, Just going by what she had observed and heard about and what little she recalls seeing first hand, had to sit around at board meetings sometimes because they were super short notice, Some were prone to get quite savage with disagreements sometimes. Often times she felt sorry for the other kids that were drug along to, Not that she ever got to know them that well in the first place.) 

Nonetheless for a borderline wasteland she preferred it over where she was born. The atmosphere was far from the more tense and high strung atmosphere of the other places she lived (guilty as charged she is pretty much Hyperion born and raised and doesn't know much else), Sure Pandora has issues with 'Rogue Bandits' but at least it was more relaxed (also if you grew up in such an environment you're prone to finding Pandora more 'relaxed' even if you are considered insane for it), Also contrary to popular belief, Less likely to get stabbed for some asinine reason.  
More likely to get robbed? Sure, But not murdered...Believe it or not. (After all at the tender age of seven and a half DID witness half a boardroom getting murdered or injured because someone was a bit too harsh in rejecting a proposal and they took out their anger by getting a bit trigger happy)  
Okay so it wasn’t quite that bad, And was sort of safe, But not in the peculiar area Angel grew up had quite a lot of competition.

When the old Hyperion branch CEO was killed nobody wanted the position because 'waaahhh Pandora dangerous, Bad luck! It’s a wasteland!' were some of the things that could be heard, It wasn’t the full extensive list but that was the gist of it.  
And Jack took it because nobody else would (while also calling them a bunch of pansies mind you), Also that and he wanted to get as far away from Tassier (and to be honest nearly everyone else too, But mostly Tassier) as possible.

It was the closest to out he was going to get, And took it. The lack of people left eager to jump ship to Pandora made it all too easy. He was surprised he made it on the list of candidates to begin with but if none of the other candidates were going to step up to the task h might as well because there was always worse.  
That and there was also Angel to consider. (And the fate of that Atlas siren they snagged years ago was not pretty, He was glad about managing to keep the whole Angel is a Siren thing under wraps.  
It was going to be much needed breathing space, And it had proved to be such.

Ironically for Pandora being considered ‘A Uncivilised Dangerous Wasteland’ the Helios branch of Hyperion (and its surrounding settlement Opportunity as a whole) was actually petty laid back and anyone willing to keep up the whole typical behaviour they could get away with at the other Hyperion spaces he was quite eager to give them a reality check and put them in their places. (I reality Angel took care of most of that herself, He was quite proud of despite his own failings as a good parent she at least turned out to be a good person...Well she wasn't perfect but she tries to be and that’s what matters)

The paranoia edge was also taken down a notch after Atlas was done in the first time (assholes who acted like they ran the place, Not to mention how the had a bit of a ‘Pandora is ours’ complex, Having them out of his hair helped but not getting sent death threats every day if this or that happened did help)

Secretary gig number seventeen Angel thought as she stared down several stacks of paperwork.  
Her father was passed out at his own desk and Wilhelm was mulling about the office (it was his job to guard the office and Jack and or Angel respectively, Nowadays anyway, On top of being offered a post as one of the general head of security this morning ‘Still considering that offer’ he would say if you were to ask. It started off as a Vault Hunting gig and he was offered a permanent job afterwards, Of course he wasn't sure what to think, Especially considering the entire thing was off the records to begin with, WHY didn’t he use company funds for the Vault? Was he hiding something? Did hyperion even know? (Spoiler: they didn’t, He never wanted them involved until after it was done and dusted, Jack was going to notify them later this week about last week's Vault mission but since they decided to drop them like hotcakes it was the loss, They were completely wrote off, Helios and Opportunity were not even classified as Hyperion property anymore. Jack went through the trouble of finding out what was up from the Echo net and found the headline ’Hyperion renounces and cuts all ties with it’s Pandoran branch due to recent events with Atlas, Dahl, And Pandoran Vault Hunters and fears the worst’ and later finding out in renouncing it all they went as far as to pawn it all off on him in a haha your problem now manner was serious (Sure he sort of wanted to be far away from the main show but he didn’t now want to be personally responsible directly for the lives of so many people instead of helping run the show and make sure things were going smoothly) . He’d eat Nishas hat if he wasn’t right on the nose with the assumption that if they had known he cracked open a Vault they would of been singing a different tune instead of saying ‘there has been little progress’ and doing it all under their nose because he wanted it to be a quiet affair).

It wasn't a tense atmosphere but Angel was used to it, The paperwork less so but she was quite familiar with the procedure anyway, It didn’t take much to get back into the swing of things. She had lots of experience over the years, Sure she was Eighteen bordering on ninteen but when you put into perspective she had been doing this stuff since she was seven it was a different story. (‘This stuff’ being a glorified receptionist turned secretary for her father stuff. She was very familiar with how the paper pushing gig worked)

It's not that Angel had much to occupy her time these days (that is aside from tinkering with stuff she could get her hands on), And this filled in some of her time, A lot of times she rolled her eyes at something her father said or did whilst she was in the office. (that much at least apparently has not changed, Almost nostalgic even)  
It wasn't terrible but their relationship was still strained by his attempts at parenting, Sure it could've been worse, But on that note it also could have been far better.  
It wasn't tense so much as it was mostly awkward, BUT he still trusted her so it was something? She has seen first hand such things not turning out well. Hell she is just mostly relieved nobody found out (Well her father knew...So did Nisha, Timothy and Wilhelm….She’s pretty sure Athena knew but she’s not a hundred percent sure on that one) she was a Siren because that had ‘bad news’ scrawled all over it. (But the fact that there were actually two other Sirens on Pandora that were not being held captive for asshole reasons ad were actually a free person in their own right made her happy that this planet was more hospitable to people like her)

She could of had formal work elsewhere but, In Opportunity anyway, It was a task and a half because it was ran in a more off-worlder setup than Pandoran in nature. And all her prior ‘Work experience’ had her fathers name all over it.  
And she really didn't want to get hired just because of who her father was...Soo that concept alone made it more than a little off-putting.  
She'd rather play glorified secretary. (though she does have one memory of when she was first asked to fill in and had been dismissed and said ‘I want to talk to the secretary and not some kid’ and one argument later the man was skulking off with his metaphorical tail between his legs, Not expecting a nine year old girl to have the gall to tell him to stop wasting her time and fuck off if he had nothing productive to say (thaaatttt and she may have also had permission from her dad to shoot anybody who acted unruly towards her especially if they kept demanding ‘i want to talk to so-and-so not some kid’, So that probably helped too, Her childhood was not normal but in that environment it was a necessary precaution.))

A self imposed shut-in you could say, But not as bad as Jack apparently who seems to live in his office most of the time nowadays.

She took a drink of the drink that was given to her a few moments ago and blanched coffee tastes like shit and spat in back in the cup and just sat it in the corner and opted to 'forget about it'..Well she sort of did bring it upon herself by saying 'yeah sure' while tending to the paperwork she could that Jack didn't expressly need to see (though there was a separate pile of those he needed to see and those he really ought to out of courtesy and a notebook she was taking notes in about what sort of paperwork and that that was seen to because this was Angel's way of doing the job properly that and of Jack wanted to know she could simply throw the book at him...Well not actually throw it and rather give it to him instead of prattling on, Figure of speech) she knew her father well enough that most of it was simple but she still bugged him about some things from time to time.

At least she got him out of the office for like three minutes earlier in the day- Even if it was to make a coffee (she told him ‘if you want one your making it yourself’ he gave in after five minutes and walked out), She'll take small wins where she sees them. And she thought her homebody ways were rather bad but at least she wasn't essentially leaving herself to wither away behind a desk  
Whoops, Turns out she said that out aloud because there was no other reason why Wilhelm would have briefly emitted a short gruff sounding amused chuckle and raised his mug of coffee as if to second that.  
Jack would of -attempted anyway- to defend his own dignity at that very moment but he was pushed out of the office by Angel a few minutes prior because 'meetings won't hold themselves, This is the relevant paperwork’ as she handed him several pieces of paper ‘and don't you dare tell me to do it instead because i'm supposed to just be a secretary remember' (though much to both what would be her chagrin and disappointment if she knew, Since the Helios branch was mostly wrote off as a total loss and was mostly disowned after 'the Atlas incident' they wanted minimal to do with said branch just in case something, Again, Went awry as the 'Alas incident' has allegedly become a problem outside of Pandora too, And if Jack was to kick the bucket she'd be the next in line 'because you're already on Pandora and we hear you are familiar with how things run!' And at this point between one disagreement, The 'Atlas incident' and 'DAHL doing the thing' once again they wrote off Pandora as bad luck and recently seem to have cut ties with the branch, To be honest Opportunity in the state it is was probably the only reason things never went askew when ties were cut instead of it going by unnoticed to everyone who wasn’t directly notified, Being pretty self sufficient (though some things would start falling behind the usual schedule, Things like imports that the head branch of Hyperion directly organises, Stalls as they went through the Hyperion main system, And Hyperion organising it, Not talking to the suppliers directly and now all that is suddenly stopped) Only thing that clued them off was requests to different branches were denied all at once a mass mail sent to 'find a different area in that branch' (to which Jack responded with the -not a lie as he didn't know until later the next day- what was going on, Is currently planning pre-emptive damage control and eventually going to have to spill the beans eventually) and then promptly being cut off from the non-Helios part of the company system. Money and funding would be more scarce, But they'll work that out. They'll just have to plan carefully)  
But Angel was unaware of all that as she promptly buried herself in paperwork. (It was, After all, Kept pretty hush hush)

 

Today also marks year two on Pandora, The settlement, Opportunity still pretty newly occupied as a whole in comparison, But as it was really only settled in proper a little under a year ago (As far as residential stuff getting set up properly) she feels sorry for most of them as there is a higher concentration of colonists and people who were pretty low on the food chain than the asinine assholes she was surrounded by around this time for the better half of most of her life. (Okay, Some were assholes but nothing like what she had to deal with before and they had the gall to say Pandoran’s were bad!)

Turns out she was pretty on the nose about Wilhelm being amused by the statement, Turns out he relayed the statement onto Timothy- Which had allegedly prompted further questioning from him, and two hours later (and a full hour marks the point where Jack returned to the office) and what looked to be (and smelt like) a sandwich that's main ingredient was some form of fish, With cheese (Cheese, If shops in Opportunity ever got cheese in it was imported and sold quite quickly so seeing cheese at all was sort of a rarity) was placed on Jack's desk, He was being stared down (he came back from a meeting a while ago only to wind up out of one pot and right into another because Timothy looked quite miffed "Sooo i hear you have been shutting yourself in the office recently, Allegedly you have not eaten much and have been living off Coffee and Crackers, That's not very healthy you know" sounding thoroughly annoyed, While Jack had tried -Quite feebly one might add- to defend his reasoning, Only to be countered by more of Timmy's whining and concerns before he could even get the first few words out, Angel noticed she was so used to seeing Jack like that that the differences between the two had became more stark.  
Timothy was obviously on the chubbier side with prominent musculature, Whereas Jacks diet of mostly coffee 'n crackers has left him looking obviously a bit more on the malnutritioned side. Very...Looking like there wasn't much to him at all, She could push him lightly and he'd probably be knocked off his feet, In the period of poor nutritional habits the body had decided to eat away at muscle so he didn't really look like much at all. She actually feels terrible for not noticing quite how bad it was, Also it further seems to point out how polar opposites the two are on some ways, Timothy a stress eater and Jack...Neglects eating almost entirely in favour of burying himself in work and could go days without eating without realising it. On top of the office hermit habit, Recent events have apparently made this worse, She felt like a terrible excuse for a child for not having noticed sooner, But see someone nearly every day and apparently if you're not actively looking for them, Small changes -Well large changes happening over a long period of time in this case- happening gradually enough you can blatantly miss them.

She at that point stopped paying attention and started using paperwork and engrossing oneself in said paperwork to hide her feelings -Not too different from her father in this way it seems- She isn't sure whether she wants to laugh at the realisation, Cry into said paperwork about it -or alternatively- Both.

The exchange goes on for a while, Occasional input from Wilhelm dismissing many half truths of Jack's and telling the whole picture, And Jack is picked up and flung over a shoulder -Jack makes an indignant squeak at the unexpected action only to then look super embarrassed- and both bringing Angel back away from ‘Paperwork headspace’ to reality and Jack looking like he just died a little on the inside "Well i'm going to make sure Jack isn't going anywhere near this office for the next week or two, You'll be okay won't you? You know how things work around here and i couldn't ask for anyone better to fill in for Jack during this time, But if you need help or a question about something you know who to ask depending on what it is" Angel gave a curt almost dumbfounded 'sure okay' in response As Timothy walked off with Jack.

Wilhelm said nothing (maybe a little surprised by the events that just unfolded) and if Angel wasn't already crying into any paperwork she certainly was now. 

Turns out Jack spent more time arguing than deciding to shut up and eat the sandwich, This was made apparent when Wilhelm piped up between bites of sandwich “He never did eat that sandwich, Want the other half?” Angel sighed before saying “Why not? Fish and cheese sounds a lot more tempting than the sludge that is this coffee”  
The other half was promptly placed on her desk and she mumbled a thanks before making quick work of the (actually deceivingly tasty) sandwich and going back to paperwork before mulling over her current fate. If something requiring her father came up him or Timothy were just a call away, However she hopes she’ll manage fine. One more step in proving she is fully competent human being (if not also a Siren) and she’s going to be just fine and she can convince her dad to just let off some because yes you're concerned i get it but we are on Pandora now, It IS safer here for me than where we have lived in the past.

 

Sometime later and one echo call exchange of “This is the Hyperion branch CEO office of Hyperion, What do you need?” “So i hear you might be a good person to ask ‘bout getting my hands on a power core, I was expecting to get the CEO not someone else but you’ll do” with a chuckle from Angel and a “I’m not the CEO but i’m the next best thing” later and she can’t say she regrets her decision later on, After all, That was how she met her friends.

**Author's Note:**

> Also thank you to a certain someone for putting up with me over Discord and letting me whine about my AU's  
> (You know who you are! Just not sure if they wanna be publicly outed and i want to show my gratitude without outing them so ominous statement is ominous)
> 
> I'd put my Tumblr here and invite you to whine about my AU's with me, But my Tumblr is nothing special and it's mostly my random musings sooooooo, Yup. No Tumblr mention's here xD
> 
> If there are any inconsistencies and questions feel free to comment them! Especially since something is probably a little 'eh' somewhere and _it might make perfect sense to me_ but what about you people? I have no clue.


End file.
